Category Archives: Henry VIII’s Bed

I added a bench for the mitre saw today. I don’t want to be running all the way back to the studio every time I have to cut something. I should have done this yesterday but I’m sometimes slow off the mark. I’d like to bring the table saw into the house as well, but expect that there would be quite a bit of resistance to say nothing of the fact that there just isn’t the space. The columns are stable, wedged, propped, centered as appropriate (somewhat of a compromise: I centred the centre of the capital on the beam and didn’t worry about whether or not the square column above the capital was centred on the capital. It worked. I think.And now, the smaller, side beams and a bit of the ceiling. Needless to say, the ceiling is not flat, looks a bit like a sine wave so I had to do a bit of shimming and levelling to get the beams all in a line.

Now for some of the tricky bits. I have to get the columns attached to the beam- but the beam in not horizontal (neither is the floor for that matter). I should point out also that the beam is not square to the wall. And as it turns out, the capital is not square. Which is to say that it’s not square to the base and it in itself is not square, more of a parallelogram. Here’s what the column should look like:

And this is what they actually look like:

A bit exaggerated maybe, but you get the idea. So, here’s what we have to decide:

should the column be square to the wall or to the beam?

should the centre of the column or the centre of the capital be centered on the beam?

should the column be vertical (to the world) or parallel to the wall?

Hmmm. I guess we’ll see what happens. Any by the way, it turns out that the base of the column is not flat- on the bottom, where it sits on the floor. Well, neither is the top of the capital. That’s what happens when you but things from unknown sources.

Added a deck to the platform. I’m just using 3/8 ply because we have a lot of it from a couple of years ago when a backhoe knocked down part of the deck and the stairs outside room 8 and we have to cover it to protect it during the rainy winter so that the whole thing didn’t get soaked before we could get it repaired. The 3/8” will be sufficient because I have 2×6 on 12” centres underneath. So it’s well supported.

And then some plastic to keep the dirt out of the rest of the room, and off the bed and all the rest of the furniture that’s been moved into that area while I’m working out here.

Here are some elevations and detail of what we’re working towards.

Here a small mock-up of what the ceiling will look like when we’re done.